Buzz Of Life
by Hekate1308
Summary: Mycroft says you shouldn't. Mycroft says he's the smart one and therefore knows that you shouldn't, but Mummy tells you that it's fine, that you're just being yourself, and you don't understand because you can't be anyone else. It's impossible. Sherlock character piece, spoilers for His Last Vow.


Mycroft says you shouldn't. Mycroft says he's the smart one and therefore knows that you shouldn't, but Mummy tells you that it's fine, that you're just being yourself, and you don't understand because you can't be anyone else. It's impossible.

Even if Mycroft is right, you can't stop. There is just too much to look at, and everything swirls through your brain, and you have to get away, because it hurts your head, and you just close your eyes and keep building your mind palace. You don't understand why Mycroft says you shouldn't do that while others are talking, or when you're in the middle of the street. He was the one who told you about it.

People call you weird when you give up and close your eyes and go to your mind palace but it is all so big and there are so many things to deduce like Mycroft's teaching you to and everything starts swimming before you, blending together, and you can't listen to them anymore, every tone that just increases the buzz, and you feel like you're about to pass out but you don't, and you have to leave because it hurts –

So you close your eyes and wait for it to stop. It never really stops, the noise never really stops, the whirlwind in your mind never really stops, it's always there in the distance, but it gets easier when you're away.

Mycroft says you're not allowed to do that at school. You don't want to go to school. There will be so many children there, and there'll be noise and deductions, and you're sure you won't like anything. You know so much already. Mycroft taught you. Why do you have to go to school? Mummy tells you it will be nice, that you'll make friends. But Mycroft says they're all stupid. And you think they are. And what if they start to talk too quickly, and there's so much going on in your head that you have to close your eyes?

Dad says not to worry, but Dad always says that. Dad is nice, but he doesn't know how you feel. Everything is so confusing, and too much, and you don't want to go to school.

You have to go anyway, and it's worse than you thought, and there are children everywhere, children who call you creepy and ask the teacher (who's stupid, why is he still married if his wife is cheating on him?) what you're doing here because you're obviously a freak who doesn't want anything to with anyone, and the teacher calls you out when you try to close your eyes in the middle of class, and you go home that day and don't cry because Mycroft never cries. They're all idiots.

Mummy makes you go back every day, and you spend it alone and wondering why you're being explained things you already know. And the noise doesn't stop, and all the many children make your head hurt, especially at recess, when you try to escape and can't, because they are too loud.

And then Dad buys you a violin. You remember that he always said he'd like one of you to play an instrument, but you never thought it'd be you.

You didn't think you wanted to, either, but then you touch it for the first time and it feels good and simple and relaxing, and when you draw out the first tones while Dad smiles proudly, the noise stops.

* * *

People are still idiots, but now you have learned how to cope. There is always a dealer nearby. The drugs make you forget there ever was this whirlwind in your mind to begin with, which your violin never did.

You still hold on to it, of course. Once you were old enough for a real instrument, your parents gave it to you for a Christmas present, and you haven't let it out of your sight since. And it's the only thing that's almost as calming as the drugs. Almost, but not quite.

You haven't talked to your family in a long time, but you doubt they notice. Mycroft is the smart one; you always had trouble shutting out the noise, and you never got along well with others. Your parents are worried about you, naturally, but you don't think they are sorry that you're gone. It doesn't matter. You're old enough. You can make your own decisions, and if you choose not to make anything of your degree, no one has any right to tell you it's a mistake. Which it isn't. You love experiments, always have, but what good would it do to work in a laboratory, being constantly annoyed by regulations you know are pointless, forced to be polite to people who don't know what they are doing?

And then the whole tedious necessity of trying to get money to research, and writing articles, and working with experts who are idiots, who will never endure what you have to –

You won't. There's always cocaine, there's your violin. There is nothing else you wish to do but get high and make the whirlwind and the noise stop.

Until you stumble upon the crime scene.

You remember being fascinated by Carl Power's murder when you were fourteen. You tried to talk to the police, but they wouldn't listen. Nobody listens.

Nobody is going to listen now either, but you still make your way into the crime scene, and you get arrested.

You are worried that Mycroft will show up and once again hold a lecture that you are throwing your life away, but instead the DI who arrested you, the DI you couldn't help but blurt your deductions at, takes you into his office and demands explanations. You won't admit it, but you are thankful that you're alone with him. As long as could focus on the body, it was easy, but once you were arrested, there were too many people around you and the noise and the whirlwind started all over again and there was no violin or cocaine to help you.

You eventually tell him about the scratches on the victim's neck and the strange colour of his fingernails, why you know that he wasn't killed where he was found. You expect to be sent into a cell afterwards, but instead the DI sends you away and, a few days later, stands in front of you, offering to work with the police once you get clean.

It is an easy decision.

Solving crimes is easy. And it makes the noise stop.

* * *

People are all around you, Donovan complaining to Lestrade about your treatment of her, Anderson doing whatever he wants to the evidence, but you have learned to block them out. You concentrate on the body and are pleased to discover that at least this time the case is interesting.

Even so, it doesn't take you long to solve it, and the chatter of the detectives afterwards because Lestrade insisted you return to Scotland Yard with him and make a statement annoys you. It reminds you of the days when you were a child and drowning, and you wonder what would happen if you were to go to your mind palace now. You finally learned, after quitting the drugs, to wait until you were alone to enter it; sometimes, you have to send people out of the room, but since you have never seen the necessity to confirm to social norms and be polite when there is no reason for it, anyone who knows you is used to how you treat him.

It would be practical to have an assistant, someone who can keep up with normal people, while you are drowning in their midst. But such an assistant would have to be ordinary, and you can't stand ordinary. You never will be able to befriend someone so that they would be happy to be your assistant.

You have never met another human being you could imagine spending a lot of time with, although Lestrade and Molly and Mike Stamford aren't too bad.

But even with them, sometimes the noise gets in the way, and the whirlwind is started, and you can't help deducing that Lestrade's wife has an affair or that Molly has bought another cat or that Mike is courting the new nurse, and you have to leave.

John Watson is the first man who doesn't make your head hurt, simply because deducing him is interesting. And it never stops being interesting. With others, it becomes repetitive after a while, but he continues to surprise you. You learn that he prefers different types of tea based on which mood he is in; you learn that he needs the battlefield, the battlefield only you see when you look at the city; you learn that he is the most loyal man you've ever met.

He's the perfect assistant; people trust him. You can concentrate on the cases while he deals with the ordinary people, and then whirlwind doesn't try to drown you, not when he's around.

* * *

You never thought you would miss the noise, the drowning, but you do now that you're a ghost.

You don't talk to anyone; you only unravel Moriarty's web, slowly, meticulously, without one human contact, and you can't understand why suddenly the situation you always wished to be in when you were a child, when you were a teenager, when you were an adult, causes you pain.

Although you do understand. John changed you – your friends changed you – you found that talking to them, meeting them, wasn't as much of a challenge as it was with other people, that you could be yourself and they would accept it. They accepted you, and their acceptance made it easier to listen.

Not being around anyone makes it easier to listen too, but it's a different kind of help. It hurts being away from home, and Mycroft is once again proven right. Caring is not an advantage.

Finally, you come home.

Everything's changed.

You didn't expect things to stay the same, of course you didn't. And Mary deserves John. She is intelligent, she will give him the life he wants –

And she's dangerous, too, but you only realize when it's almost too late. She should have talked to you. Instead, she chose to her and John's life, and that of their child, and you know what you have to do.

First, you have to get the information Magnussen possesses.

Afterwards, you have to kill him.

There's no other way. Men like him will always be dangerous; it's enough that he knows. If John and Mary are to live a good life, he has to die.

She will give John what he craves – a normal and yet exciting life. Your doctor never realized that he wanted the impossible, that he wanted a paradox, but somehow he got it. You decide that sometimes, the world is fair after all and gives people what they deserve.

You have no place in his new life, but you don't worry about the noise or the whirlwind, because you don't expect to live long enough to experience it again. If you aren't killed immediately, Mycroft will send you on a suicide mission. It's his preferred method of not getting his hands dirty and yet making sure whoever is to be punished never returns.

As it turns out, the second theory is correct, and you are sent away. You tell John goodbye, knowing you will never see him again, and board the plane.

For the first time, your mind is completely still, and you would laugh at the irony if you weren't trying not to cry.

You can feel the theories rushing through your brain, and for a moment you fear being drowned in the whirlwind again, the noise becoming unbearable, but then you realize it doesn't matter because it's nothing to be afraid of.

You feared your mind once. You don't anymore. Because the noise –

It is the noise of life.


End file.
